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The Queue: Orc history, Azeroth's size, and death is but a setback

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky (@adamholisky) will be your host today.

So the joke around here is that whenever I go out to grab lunch news breaks. It actually happens relatively often -- and I need to give everyone here a heads up that tomorrow I'm going to be on a boat and Matt Rossi will be taking over for the morning/early afternoon.

Keep an eye out for WoD's release date. Basically it has to come out tomorrow, because I'll be away entirely.

Supernova asked:

In the BlizzCon teaser of WoD, the orc narrator says "Ours is a legacy of conquest, the rising tide of blood and iron that will wash over this world and all others". When I read anything about orcs in the lore, it says that they were shamanistic and peaceful, that they were at peace with the Draenei. Why now, suddenly, "theirs" is a legacy of conquest?

I think you're on to something frankly, about the changing narrative of the history of the Orcs. There's a few different ways that I look at this.

First, it's that Garrosh has been trying to rewrite Orc history into a more violent and warrior-like culture. This was his motive throughout the last expansion -- he's evil and he wanted to bring evil to everyone. This is also a common theme among the power hungry leaders; it's philosophized that power controls our language, our history, and that even when the power has gone, it still exerts itself over the discrete simulcra of historical thought. In this case Garrosh said savage so much, we all begin to believe it.

So that's the "in-game" view of the way orcs are represented. There's also the fact that they used to fight amongst the clans, and they've had wars at points, so "peaceful" is only a concept that has meaning when it's antithesis exists -- war. But does that make it a legacy? No, I don't think so.

And that leads me to my second point -- I think this is sorta the creative dev team at Blizzard flexing their muscles in reshaping the narrative overall. Now granted this is a different time line, and as is correctly pointed out in the comments, this could very well just be from the standpoint of the Orcs in the new Draenor. But still, we've been told "savage" from the very beginning of this expansion. Day one it's all we heard. That creates a strong mindset, and one that is intentionally being done. Yes, it's being done for story telling, but the story is also being told for a purpose.

Keep in mind I'm not really criticizing the creative dev team here. It's their prerogative here to shape the story as they want to. As long as the story is good, I'm just going to go along for the ride.

Instamat asked:

Is Azeroth full scale or are we giant pieces on a miniaturized game board?

It's not full scale, and I wouldn't even call it a miniaturized scale -- I'd call it more "warped." We know from the books that journeys in Azeroth take a long time, but in the game they can happen in the span of minutes. Now of course this is necessary for gameplay, but still... it's not to scale.

That gets me thinking, one day it'd be fun to play a game that's really to scale. You want to go out on an adventure and kill some boars? Better get all your gear in the city you'll need, because you just can't port back. And be sure not to bring too much wine, lest you get Lannistered.

CTR_Aidineri asked:

We're already starting to see some characters in the WoD beta that are dying or having some sort of other major event happen to them that changes them forever. But due to the split timeline, this can be slightly confusing. Is it our character or Draenor's character? Do you think the Blizzard dev team are going to use this to their advantage? Instead of "Death was only a setback", will we be getting more "But you have only defeated by Draenor Doppelganger!"?

There's going to be some of both -- I don't want to get into specifics because of seriously huge spoilers, but yeah, it's going to be both.

Have questions about the World of Warcraft? The WoW Insider crew is here with The Queue, our daily Q&A column. Leave your questions in the comments, and we'll do our best to answer 'em!